Television in the new millennium can be a glorious place, where boundaries are pushed regularly, often by Hollywood heavyweights. It’s where directors such as David Fincher and Martin Scorsese come to experiment with long-form storytelling, and where renowned actors like Kevin Spacey, Jessica Lange, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, Kyra Sedgwick, and many others are willing to commit their time and talents. Sometimes there’s the allure of a great story that can be told in one season (an enticement that drew bona fide movie stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey to HBO’s True Detective). Other times, there’s the appeal of both creativity and freedom (Kevin Bacon only has to shoot 15 episodes a season of Fox’s The Following, allowing him to pursue big screen roles while also enjoying a steady paycheck). With the advent of edgy original programming across networks like AMC, Showtime, FX, Netflix, and HBO, the appeal of working in television has never been higher.

Um, sort of. I actually hadn’t dreamt of putting out a book for years. Back in my university years, when I was doing my undergrad in English and Creative Writing, creating a novel or short story collection was pretty high up on the priority list. But time and ambition changed my thoughts on pursuing that avenue. I’m an impatient person, so the whole process of sending out short stories for potential publication and waiting to hear back was just not in my make-up. Had two of the ladies from ECW Press not suggested I make a pitch for their Pop Classics line, I don’t think I ever would have considered it. I’m so thrilled it worked out, though. There’s something pretty damn surreal about holding a book with your name on it.

This essay is part of a series of investigations, reflections, and reminiscences by writers, artists, and musicians who were influenced by David Lynch’s seminal television show Twin Peaks. To read more, or to learn about participation, visit www.twinpeaksproject.com.

Thanks to my library’s tattered copies of Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone that were encased in protective blue binders, (wrapped in plastic!), I knew the exact night some highly anticipated and highly bizarre show was going to debut. The critics were freaking out about the premiere of Twin Peaks, saying it was the weirdest thing to hit TV ever, so I—an identity-hungry fifteen year old kid on the brink of a major hormone and brain chemistry explosion—made sure to watch its arrival in the spring of 1990. The very first seconds of the title sequence shocked me into silence. It wasn’t what I saw that floored me; it was what I heard. Don’t get me wrong, the mythology took hold as the story unfolded, particularly the central mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, and why. But composer Angelo Badalamenti’s score was aural heroin.

Did you know that the bird in the opening shot is a Varied Thrush? When I watch the show now, I feel like his look mimics my own from that night when the first bass note hit. His head cocked up to the cloudy sky roughly translates to: “What the hell is that sound and where did it come from?” We both froze in rapturous attention.

Admittedly, I was stoned. But I’d never heard a resonance so deep, so thundering, and yet melodious. The first boom is cautiously wistful, and the second drops several octaves into a dark pit. The third note rises quickly back up to meet the first two somewhere in between, while the piano is a wisp of smoke in the background. I could actually see it.

Once that week’s show was over, there was no way I could get that music back until the next episode. During those pre-internet days, I only had one shot at viewing a program unless I recorded it on the VCR, which I did for the second episode. I watched the opening credits over and over, staring so hard at the screen that everything blurred into leaping green and black dots. For the next two months, I rushed home every Thursday night to watch the show.